The fifth element

“The fifth season is inside you, thus the name of the exhibition — The Fifth Season,” said the artist Khuda Bux Abro about his fortnight long exhibition at the first floor of the Poppy Seed Gallery in Karachi.

Abro, a staunch supporter of the free media, deals mainly with social themes and human rights issues. For his latest venture, however, he has decided to explore a new arena, a fresh perspective which marks a departure from his usual trajectory.

Abro talks about Ghalib’s poetry when asked to cite the inspirations behind his exhibition. He has used a number of verses as calligraphy on his canvas, painting poems in shades of red, blue and brown, giving classical poetry a freshness not often seen on canvas.

Some of the most captivating moments of this collection come with the series of self-portraits, made using digital prints on paper. Heavily employing blues and browns in his work, when asked about this particular choice, Abro simply says, “Blue gives a calming effect and is the colour of the universe. Brown is the colour of the earth and gives the feeling of warmth.” Abro decided to carefully amalgamate raw photography and his graphic design skills to form his own unique voice. “I express my feelings through my self-portraits. It is like visual poetry for me.” As a viewer, studying his self-portraits was a bit of a challenge; they are not easy to access; one sensed that each portrait was its own story, but not a story that would give itself up without an effort.

When questioned as to which medium and style he preferred working with, the artist claimed to enjoy both equally. “Each type of work has its own significance and impacts the viewer in a different way.’’ With one exception, Abro has in his self-portraits tweaked his photographs. “It’s sad to see that digital is still not considered an appropriate medium for art.” When we think of the word art, our minds immediately go towards paintings, this in spite of the fact that the Pakistani artist who commands the highest prices abroad, Rashid Rana, works with digital media. ‘’We need to broaden our horizons,” says Abro, whose digital prints look like a mixture of something that has been worked on using a computer as well as by hand. The idea is to puzzle the audience so that they are unable to really pinpoint which mediums have been used and where. It is the classic Cronenberg concern of where the human hand ends and the machine begins. As a viewer, it requires careful examination before one is able to tell the digital effects from the painting and it is this contemplation and curiosity which is ultimately the great success of Abro’s oeuvre.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29^th, 2010.